Xtreme Defense

Many of the vendors at the expo were strikingly similar to Bitar: men with ambitious ideas who entered the counterterrorism market as a second career. George Cairnes, a former pilot, is now selling full-body restraining cuffs. The elaborate bondage gear was developed for police as an alternative to "hog-tying," and is being used by the military, according to Cairnes. He said he had an order for 200 going to Guantanamo Bay. Joe Villa, a mechanical engineer, founded US Bunkers, a Florida-based company specializing in flying saucer-shaped mini-fortresses that can fit in your back yard. Villa conceived the idea after 1992's Hurricane Andrew as a way to protect people and property from violent storms, but he, too, is expanding into the counterterrorism market: Imagine a safe room to be used after a biochemical attack; the company points out it could also double as a sauna. A promotional poster depicts a family grilling next to a bunker.

With so many vendors, drawing visitors to individual displays -- particularly visitors with money -- is cutthroat competition. Charles Smith, a former Nokia salesman, persuaded a childhood friend from Texas, an attractive blonde, to stand with him at his booth. His strategy appeared to work, as a crowd assembled to look at the blonde, and Smith's product, a desktop machine designed to drill holes through computer drives, destroying sensitive data.

Hesco Bastion, the world's largest manufacturer of sand-filled barricades (ubiquitous in Iraq and Afghanistan to shield against attacks), took a similar route: It hired midriff-baring models to serve soft drinks from a bar made of its sandbags. The show's organizers wouldn't let them serve beer.

Some vendors go negative. Grant Haber, a former police officer and now a distributor of bomb-proof trash cans designed for subways and other public places, hung out by the press trailer, trying to entice a reporter to examine his file of allegations against a rival manufacturer "They've been fraudulent," he said, clutching the folder. "I have proof of falsified test reports."

Back at Bitar's booth, the draw was StunStrike. When the crowd would thin, all Bitar had to do was flip the switch, and people would flock to the booth.

At noon on the second day, XADS captured the attention of a VIP. Marine Corps Col. David Karcher, who heads the Pentagon's Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, stopped to watch the demonstration, and promised to return.

The vendors' eyes followed Karcher, a man who controls $55 million in annual funding, as he walked slowly past the exhibits, explaining his role: He pays firms to develop nonlethal technology and to test it against strict Pentagon and international standards. For example, his office helped develop the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses millimeter waves -- a supercharged version of microwaves -- to heat up the skin's nerve endings, creating a burning sensation similar to touching a 100-watt light bulb. Except the beam, while painful, does not actually burn the skin.

The weapon was only recently declassified, and the Pentagon still won't divulge how far the beam goes, but Karcher says it could be used to control crowds at feeding stations in countries like Somalia and Iraq. "Often you see the people pushing their way to the front of the crowd are young men," he said. "They'll push women and children out of the way."

Karcher pointed to a demo of the system set up at Raytheon's booth. No required release forms here; Raytheon took a more direct approach: self-infliction. "We can't do it to you, but if you want to do it to yourself," the vendor said, handing over a control switch.

When a reporter hesitated, Karcher quickly offered up his own hand. "Press the button," he instructed. The invisible beam clicked on.

"I put my hand there, it starts to hurt, I take my hand way," Karcher explained calmly as he slowly slid his arm away from the beam. The point, he continued, is not to hurt someone, but simply to force a particular action, or to condition a response.

"Sort of like Pavlov's dogs," interrupted the enthusiastic Raytheon vendor.

Comparing humans to dogs who salivate on command didn't seem to sit well with Karcher, who winced. The Pentagon's nonlethal work, particularly that which relies on pain, is under intense public scrutiny and subject to international legal conventions. But the main problem with the Active Denial System, and similar directed energy weapons, is size, according to Karcher. Now the weapon goes on a Humvee, but the military is finding that troops in Iraq want smaller, handheld devices -- phasers.

But it's precisely those goals -- small and long-range weapons -- that place phaser technology, at least for now, in the realm of science fiction. The largest lightning guns in the XADS lab are too big to be mobile weapons, and while the rifle has generated sparks of up to 12 feet, Bitar says, the system has blown out repeatedly and isn't stable beyond four feet.

The military would like something that can go 30 to 100 feet. "We can fire a taser and be very effective at 15 feet," Karcher said. But 15 feet is almost "knife fight" range, he added, and in that case, troops may want a more lethal option, like a rifle.

But for every naysaying expert, there always seems to be a Pentagon official who believes the risk is worthwhile. Franz Gayl, one of the officials who contacted Bitar after hearing about XADS from news accounts, agrees there are barriers to a lighting gun, but he argues for helping nascent companies. The concept of a lightning gun, though risky, offers a potential payoff, according to Gayl. He noted a military officer who built a Tesla coil weapon, claiming to have tested it by shooting it "into the grille of an annoying rude driver in a traffic jam."

Back at the show, Bitar looked bitterly across the way at Raytheon, which was handing out customized jars of spicy hot fajita powder to promote its "burning" nonlethal weapon. Other experienced venders dished out logo-inscribed chocolate and pens. XADS had only postcard- size brochures and business cards.

It was the end of the third day, and still no sales. A man who introduced himself as a buyer for the Turkish military asked if he could get a free sample of Bitar's lasers, or barring that, could he borrow one and return it if the Turkish military wasn't interested. Bitar said that wasn't likely.

"We're not going to do that," Bitar chuckled. "We're not Wal-Mart."

But Bitar noticed that foreign militaries were the most interested in his weapons, and officials from Asia, the Middle East and Europe had all visited his booth. "It's kind of weird, especially because when it comes to weapons, you'd rather arm your own country than someone else," he said.

But he shrugged and added, "A customer is a customer."

Toward the end of the expo, Bitar was demonstrating the lightning gun when he suddenly recoiled in pain. "It bit him," Fry said with a note of concern. One of the electric tentacles had reached around and grabbed Bitar. He rubbed his shoulder. Since electricity seeks the quickest route to complete its circuit, it will reach out and touch the first thing that's grounded, such as a person holding the gun.

Bitar appeared unusually downbeat. He'd been standing for three days straight at the booth, and he was worried about how to keep his business going. Even with $1 million total in start-up funds, he'd have to close shop in about six months if he didn't get orders. "I didn't sleep well last night," he acknowledged. "Busy thinking about things, like how to get through to the Joint Nonlethal Directorate, so they take us a little more seriously."

At dinner the night before, Bitar's confidence -- shaken by the competition at the show-- seemed to ebb. He would be turning 40 soon. The initial success of XADS allowed his wife to stay home with their young son. His bravado momentarily gone, he talked about his previous businesses, which, while not failures, had not really been successes either. The Styrofoam recycling company sold at break even, and his parachute logo business barely made a profit.

Back at the show, Bitar sighed. "You get all this stuff going against us."

But a few minutes later, he was uptempo again.

"I just think we're only limited by our funding," Bitar said, pausing to pack up the cartoon poster of their weapons. "We could do so much more than the big companies." He pointed to the Raytheon booth. "These guys are burning your hand at 10 feet away with $50 million worth of research."

He gestured to the StunStrike. "We've got $10,000 worth of research in that thing, and we can do the exact same thing."

Pausing, he added, "Okay, we haven't been through all the studies and testing because we haven't had all the money to put into it."

Bitar's concerns are not just about big companies like Raytheon, but also about his nemesis Ionatron, a start-up backed partly by investment from the CIA venture capital fund. Ionatron, whose weapons are based on a similar concept for channeling lightning, was founded in 2002, and its stock is now worth more than half a billion dollars on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Unlike Bitar, who won his early contracts through a competitive process, Ionatron's most significant contract, for $12.6 million, came through a congressional line item, which typically requires high-level lobbying. Another difference from XADS: Ionatron would like the nonlethal lightning guns to be, if necessary, lethal.

But both companies face an age-old problem with harnessing lightning: It is notoriously difficult to control. Making it go straight and far requires breaking down the air, like drilling a path through wood for a nail. Creating this path for any more than a few feet presents a formidable challenge.

Bitar's idea for doing this, like Ionatron's, is to use pulsed lasers to create a conductive path ahead of the lightning. A pioneer in this method is a New Mexico-based physicist named Jean-Claude Diels. The Belgian-born scientist says he started his research not to build "zap guns," as he calls them, but to prevent deaths from lightning, which kills on average 67 people a year in the United States, according to the National Weather Service. But the military was never terribly interested in his work, he said, and nonmilitary funding for research is hard to come by these days.

Now caught in a bind, Diels takes money from Ionatron. He doubts it would be possible to shrink the weapon down to the size of a pistol, although he believes a portable system, such as one mounted on a car, is possible.

"It's taking a disturbing turn," Diels said with a sigh. "I feel a little bit like the German scientists of the Third Reich, who have no option but to do this research because that's what the government funds."

What's wrong with the idea of a stun gun? "This nonlethal technology, I mean, aimed at electrocuting a crowd of protesters?" he said. "That's not really appetizing, I must say."

As the spectators at FPED thinned out, Bitar started to pack up, and Fry went to get the car. They'd be back in town the next week for another show, but Fry needed to return home for an exam: He's getting a master's degree in theology and peace studies. On the way out, Fry looked back at the weapons bazaar and shook his head.

Toward the front, a banner for Hawaiian Shaved Ice had fallen askew.

Perhaps what makes U.S. military trade shows seem so incongruous is that they treat their market -- war and terrorism -- as if it were plastics, medical supplies or textiles. And Bitar is just another entrepreneur. Despite his lack of big orders, back in Indiana a couple months later, he enthused over his company's progress. Field reports from Iraq on his dazzlers were "stellar," he said, and several Pentagon offices had placed small trial orders. A European television crew wanted to follow him around for six months.

The Pentagon also is preparing for the first time to buy large numbers of commercial dazzlers from several manufacturers and give them to troops in Iraq. Gayl, the Pentagon official who has supported Bitar's work, cautions now that he is concerned that some companies, including XADS, are making lasers so intense that they would permanently blind the people they target. The XADS lasers "are way out of line," Gayl said recently.

Bitar adamantly disagrees that his lasers will cause permanent blindness, saying they are eye-safe, if used properly. It's a key point for his company, since the StunStrike weapon has slipped to the back burner, and the dazzlers' time appears to have arrived. Bitar said he was negotiating with what he called a major supplier for the military and law enforcement on a new version of XADS's dazzler. The PD/G-105 is a souped-up laser that would be twice as powerful as the ones Bitar sold at the Burger King back in January.

The supplier, Bitar said, was looking at orders in the tens of thousands.

"It'll totally kick butt," he said.

Sharon Weinberger is writing a book about the Pentagon and fringe science, to be published by Nation Books next year.